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Glossary

Main's World has its own vocabulary. Here's what everything means.

  • Main — a person on Main's World. Everyone is a verified, real human. (You're a Main.)
  • Stage name — the name a Main chooses to go by. Every stage name is unique: capitalization and spacing don't make a name different, so once someone is "DJ Neon", nobody else can be "dj neon". You can change or clear yours whenever you like, and a name you give up becomes free for someone else to take.
  • SHIP — a Secure Human Interaction Protocol: the category Main's World belongs to. See What is SHIP.
  • Tape — a post: a photo or video moment, recorded where and when you are. See Tapes.
  • The worlds — the three settings that decide who can see a tape:
    • SKY — public: anyone can see it.
    • LAND — your connections: only people you've connected with.
    • DEEP — private: yours alone, unless you tag someone in.
  • Vibe — a live, shared gathering on the map that no one owns. See Vibes.
  • Future Vibe — a vibe planned ahead of time, with a start, an optional end, and a place. Joining one before it starts is an RSVP. See Vibes.
  • Crew — a lasting group that can create together and share what it earns (planned). See Crews.
  • Appreciation (thumbs up) — the way you tell someone their moment mattered. Giving one gifts the maker a unit of $MAIN; it's the only way $MAIN is created. There are no downvotes, and appreciating your own tape never pays you.
  • Energy credits — your daily fuel for doing things (posting, appreciating, commenting). You get 10 a day.
  • $MAIN — the earned currency, created only when other real people appreciate what you made. You can't buy it or give it to yourself. See The economy.
  • Special link — a web link a creator can make for one of their tapes (or a vibe they're part of) that lets anyone watch that one thing in any browser — no World App, no account. View-only, and revocable at any time: killing the link kills every copy. See the worlds & privacy.
  • Tape deck — the strip of time-travel controls that unfolds from the rewind button at the bottom of the map: scrub the timeline, skip between tapes, or eject back to now. See Tapes.
  • Time travel (◀◀) — rewinding the map's timeline, using the tape deck, to revisit earlier moments.
  • Throwback (◀◀ THROWBACK) — a tape posted from your gallery after the fact. Its timestamp is when the photo was actually taken, and it carries a small ◀◀ THROWBACK marker so it isn't mistaken for a live moment. See Tapes.
  • Ghost dot — a small, faint, world-colored dot on the map marking a moment you can't open from where you are: a tape in another world, or a connections-only tape from someone you haven't connected with yet. It shows only that something is there — never who or what. See the worlds & privacy.
  • Zero-knowledge proof — the cryptography that lets Main's World confirm you're a real, unique human without ever learning who you are.
  • World App — the app that verifies you're a real human when you join Main's World.
  • World Chat — World App's own end-to-end encrypted messenger between verified humans. Mains who have connected can message each other there, straight from Main's World. See the worlds & privacy.